


Swing Time

by youabird (nevulon)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Jealousy, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Slice of Life, Swing Dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-26 21:51:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9923678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevulon/pseuds/youabird
Summary: "We can go anyway," Bucky says. It was his idea to go dancing. It always is. There’s a place not far, where they don’t charge an arm and a leg to get in and they play the kind of music he likes. Swing music, heavy on the trumpets. The kind of music that makes a dull, red pain sprout behind Steve’s eyes."Yeah?" Steve says, unenthusiastic."Yeah. Screw those girls." Well, not at this rate, although that's no skin off Steve's teeth. He never had high hopes for this mysterious Dolores. Bucky presses on, leaning forward. "We can go, just you and me."





	

They were meant to go dancing a half an hour ago.  
  
The ancient clock on the wall, a pendulum-swing relic from a different age, ticks loudly. Each tick is sharply audible, even over the chatter of the other diners and the hustle and bustle of waitresses darting around with plates on their arms. Steve’s watching the minutes bleed off the clock, but he can feel eyes on the back of his head. It’s their cranky, million year old waitress. At the automat counter, she strikes a match and glares at them. She’s been waiting, hawklike, for the first sign of weakness, of surrendering the table.  
  
Her name is Dolores. Not the waitress—Steve’s date. She’s the elephant in the room, her absence almost tangible, and this evening is all her fault. Steve never met her, never even set eyes on her, but he has experience with these things. Besides, he met Margaret. Margaret, in her yellow dress, the seams busting at the side to contain the lower half of her. Margaret was buying a knish and potatoes when she caught Bucky’s eye, or Bucky caught hers. Either way, it wasn’t _Margaret_ who didn’t want to come.  
  
Steve had liked the look of her. She had an enormous amount of hips and thighs, like a fat chicken, but her face was unbearable sweetness under her light hair. He noticed her first, before Bucky: he saw her yellow dress and nudged him in the side. She said she had a friend named Dolores who’d love to come along with Steve. Bucky smiled and she beamed and that was that, settled.  
  
Across the table, Bucky sits surrounded by coffee cups. One’s Steve’s, but the rest are Bucky’s. This place has dirt-cheap coffee, three cents a cup, and Bucky’s had four cups in two hours. If Steve had that much, his heart might explode into wet pulp, but it hasn’t rattled Bucky. Only those three flicks of hair, one two three, over his left ear give anything way.  
  
There’s a landscape of spilled sugar on the waxy tabletop. It’s gritty against his finger, but it gives him something to do while he watches Bucky wait.  
  
Margaret was beautiful, in her yellow dress pulled tight over her ass and pink in the apples of her cheeks, but this isn’t the first time they’ve been left sitting, wondering, waiting. Won’t be the last.  
  
Bucky’s watching the clock, shoulders tensed under his second-best shirt and knees jittering against the grimy automat table, and it’s clear to Steve that Dolores and Margaret aren’t coming. It’s clear to their waitress, too. Most likely, Margaret couldn’t sell Dolores on an evening of dancing with a midget with asthma.  
  
"It's almost eight," he announces, even though they're both watching the clock. His lip is between his teeth, digging into the soft skin until it’s white. He’s so hopeful it almost hurts. Sitting there, with his big shoulders and wrists angled away, as if poised to stand up at any moment. It sure hurts worse than Dolores failing to appear. Steve never even met Dolores.  
  
Steve leans back til his ear brushes up against the concrete wall. He put on a clean shirt for this, but as usual Bucky got all dolled up. It wasn’t easy for him to get here so prompt, looking so good: he ran from the docks to his apartment, washing off the day’s sweat and high-tailing it to meet Steve in no time at all. There were still comb-marks in his hair one hundred and twenty minutes ago. Like streets inked onto a map. And now, in agitation, he’s messed it up, one two three.  
  
Bucky licks at his lips and sighs. Steve keeps his ear against the slippery concrete and draws curlicues in the scattered sugar. Then he flicks the drawing away, raining sugar down across the linoleum.  
  
"We can go anyway," Bucky says. It was his idea to go dancing. It always is. There’s a place not far, where they don’t charge an arm and a leg to get in and they play the kind of music he likes. Swing music, heavy on the trumpets. The kind of music that makes a dull, red pain sprout behind Steve’s eyes.  
  
"Yeah?" Steve says, unenthusiastic.  
  
"Yeah. Screw those girls." Well, not at this rate, although that's no skin off Steve's teeth. He never had high hopes for this mysterious Dolores. Bucky presses on, leaning forward. "We can go, just you and me."  
  
He looks so hopeful. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget who’s older, because it’s always Steve who sets the agenda. Steve’s flat feet, Steve’s social graces, Steve’s public grievances with the world. The problem is that Bucky is agreeable. He’s nice. He’s the kind of guy who can talk a girl in a yellow dress into going out dancing. And Steve is not nice. He just pretends to be, for Bucky’s sake.  
  
He rolls his palm over the sugar. It’s sticky now, from the sweat on his skin, and it sticks fast. When he folds his hand into a fist, the sugar crunches.  
  
"I’m tired," he says. "Think I might just go home…"  
  
Instead of answering at first, Bucky looks at him. And Steve looks back. The empty coffee cups clutter up the table. How much money have they wasted already, on two girls who were never going to show? He knew, the way Margaret fumbled for the name of a friend, what that meant. Maybe there is no Dolores; maybe there is, and Margaret never brought him up. Maybe she thought that she could blow them off tonight and get a second chance with Bucky, just the two of them. She saw the way he was looking at her, and Steve saw the way she was looking at him.  
  
If so, she’s wrong. Bucky’s a lot of things—handsome, healthy, interesting to women, six feet tall, golden—but he’s not that. He's not anything like the person Margaret must have thought he was. Despite the sting of rejection, Steve holds a smug thought in his heart like a candle flame. She doesn't know Bucky at all. She'll never know Bucky like Steve knows him.  
  
"Steve," Bucky says gently, right now, elbows resting on the dingy tabletop, eyes clear and sympathetic. "You want to just stay in?"  
  
He wavers. Head back, shoulders back, he rolls his chest in. Contorted like this, his ribs become concave, balanced with his heart in the middle. It thuds in his chest a step off rhythm: it drags its feet on every fourth beat. Patient, Bucky waits, and Steve’s heart beats a ragged little tune before his resolve crumbles.  
  
He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t need to. Just sighs, and Bucky smiles his best, most wonderful smile. And doesn’t Steve’s heart skip a whole goddamn beat when Bucky aims that million dollar smile at him.  
  
The waitress is faster than a bullet; before Bucky can even pull his wallet from his pocket, she’s at the table, angling for the cash. He hands her a quarter and tells her to keep the change. She doesn’t quite melt—she’s too crusty to melt, but she softens at the brightness of Bucky’s smile.  
  
They step out into the night, and the air is glorious—cool and fresh, with the wind from upriver teasing the hair off their faces. The city twinkles in the early twilight. Manhattan beckons from across the water, its spires lit with electric lights that pour radiance into the sky and light up the clouds. It’s a night for dancing, even Steve can tell. There’s fire in the air, diamonds in each pane of storefront glass.  
  
"God!" Bucky announces to no one in particular, hands in his pockets. No one looks at him but Steve. "It’s nice out, isn’t it?"  
  
"Sure," Steve says dubiously, following him.  
  
These kind of nights energize Bucky. Young, untroubled, humming with electricity, he rolls the change in his pockets like he has money to burn (he doesn’t, and he’s out a quarter already). Animated with a musical grace, he leads Steve through the sidewalk crowds. The crowds obligingly part for him, this handsome guy nearly waltzing down the sidewalk, a Red Sea of human bodies turning to watch him pass.  
  
Without warning, the sea rushes back in and closes Steve off, away from Bucky. He applies his elbows and does his best to keep up.  
  
Once, years ago, he and Bucky rustled up enough cash to take Bucky’s sisters to see a Fred Astaire movie, some ridiculous farce about a gambler and a dance teacher. That’s what Bucky reminds him of, gliding down the avenue, blistered shoes barely touching the pavement. Like he’s Fred Astaire.  As if the city is only a movie-set painted to look like a city, with an orchestra urging him on, stirring him along on a beat that only he can hear. Not glamorous, not precisely, not in his old shirt and his nose and cheeks burned from the midday sun, but different. Luminous, almost. Like Fred Astaire. Like he’s got a soft-filter camera-glow, anointed, chosen, gold.  
  
Steve, like Ginger Rogers, trails after him, second billing, less important.  
  
After a time, the foot traffic thins. It’s not a seedy bar they’re going to, but only just. It’s musty inside, and it serves cheap gin, the kind that smells like furniture polish. This particular place is prone to altercations as the evening winds down, but with any luck, they’ll be in bed before that happens. As they arrive, Bucky grinning and Steve panting, there’s already somebody being tossed out. No punches are being thrown, just some hapless bum landing hard on the seat of his pants. The bouncer yammers at him. A big guy, with arms like hams, an ex-sailor gone slightly to seed, eyes beady and adept at finding trouble. The bum just lies there in a heap like so much garbage. Steve tries not to stare as they duck into the crowded dance-hall, the band already whirling at top volume.  
  
They pull up short fifteen feet inside, because that’s where the teeming tide of dancers hits them. Nobody even looks at them, too busily engrossed in the music. It is _loud_ —Steve’s brain decides to skip straight to a headache, pain bubbling up against his skull. His left ear, his better ear, hears the brass section blaring over the melody. His right ear only registers volume.  
  
Somebody whirls past him, skirts flaring, and she steps on Steve’s foot. Hopping backwards, he only avoids falling over because Bucky steadies him. "I hate it here," he grouses, foot throbbing. Bucky nods distantly. He probably can’t hear Steve’s reedy little voice in the hurricane of music. The music seized hold of him as soon as they stepped inside, grabbing fast to him, like it always does, and it won’t let go until he’s danced it out again.  
  
They didn’t need Margaret or Dolores, never did. Didn't need anyone, really. Already, a few girls have let their silken gazes linger on Bucky’s height and expansive shoulder blades. He’ll have his pick of partners, if he wants. And Steve can keep a seat waiting for him at the bar.  
  
The bar. Goodbye Bucky; hello alcohol. He threads his way through the tiny spaces in the crowd. At the edges of the press of dancing bodies, little gaps open up, and Steve’s small enough to dart through them. Bucky isn’t, but he trusts Bucky to find him after a while. Maybe he’ll crash against the bar as he dances his way across the floorboards, but more likely he’ll remember what Steve does every time he gets dragged out here.  
  
"Ouch!" someone says. Steve turns; he stepped on her foot. She blinks at him, green eyes under dark lashes. She’s smaller than Steve (although far more proportional), which is why he didn’t see her.  
  
"Sorry," he says, and bumps onward, probably stepping on other people’s feet.  
  
He slides onto a seat and turns. No sign of Bucky—not surprising. There were girls closing in on him when Steve took his leave, eyes alight with something kind of like hunger. Steve’s experienced it himself, although never so boldly. Girls can do that. Girls aren’t supposed to be much of anything, until guys train themselves not to see too far beneath the surface and then fool themselves into thinking that girls are only surface. Consequently, women acquire a mystical feminine invisibility before they’re even grown, both seen and completely ignored. Margaret had looked at Bucky with a kind of naked interest, as if she could see right through his clothes and detect every plane of muscle underneath. Bucky wouldn’t do that. Bucky would not allow his eyes to trail over her neckline or the voluminous expanse of her backside. Even if Bucky were tempted, which he never is, it would be unthinkable for Bucky to ogle a lady at three in the afternoon—even if that same lady was eyeing him like a porterhouse steak.  
  
Steve noticed, though. He noticed her ass and her hips and how her waist nipped in until you could hold it in two hands, but that was different. Steve is also invisible.  
  
He buys a beer and sits on his stool, skinny legs dangling an inch off the ground. Even still, he feels the music thumping through the floorboards. The joists shimmy when people stomp their feet, but every beat of the drums and blare of the trumpets passes through the floor and races up Steve’s spine. This headache is going to be glorious. There’s a Technicolor sunset already flaring behind his eyes, and it can only get worse. His ribs seem to tremble finely. They don’t rattle much, but he imagines sawdust floating through his abdomen, pooling in his stomach.  
  
God, this music. Steve listens to the radio for one thing and one thing only, and it’s not music. He loves baseball the way other people love music, but still, he’s never understood what he’s missing out on. He has no appreciation for music. Tin Pan Alley he knows about, and he can keep a rough beat by tapping it out, but that’s all. Distantly, he’s aware. He can see the dreamy-eyed looks on flushed red faces, he’s seen grown men go to pieces at a well-played piano, but nothing happens when he hears a swelling tune. Maybe it’s his brain. Maybe it’s just his bum ears. Either way, music does nothing for him. It does everything for Bucky; right now, it’s sweeping him along, some pretty slip of a thing in his arms. Like a flash, he cuts through the crowd, like sunlight striking metal. He draws Steve’s eye. Perfectly assimilated in his ordinary shirt and ordinary pants, neither a graceless dancer nor a skilled one, there’s no reason he ought to be remarkable, yet he is—he draws Steve’s attention like a magnetic pull. There he goes, Steve’s gaze never far behind.  
  
The beer sweats in his hand.  
  
Songs pass.  
  
In truth, he didn’t get or understand that damn Fred Astaire movie either. He remembers it distinctly, how it had rained for days and everyone spread their wet coats over their knees. The picture house had rapidly turned into a jungle, a dark, wet place so humid it nearly hurt Steve’s lungs just to breathe. Bucky and his sisters, quietly watching Ginger Rogers’ skirts whirl like sea foam in a current, hadn’t seemed to notice. It was all Steve could notice. The dancing was nice, and Ginger Rogers looked incredible in that white gown, dancing on the stairs, but the music passed through one ear and out the other. Even the song that Bucky loves best. It’s all noise to him, distorted by the perpetual ringing in his right ear.  
  
If—if! _If_ he understood music, he might dance the way Bucky does. The young woman in his arms, who may be a new partner but may be the same, is light on her feet. Her body’s molded to the strong curve of Bucky’s chest, her fingers digging into his arms. He isn’t a cut of meat, Steve thinks, heat gathering in his cheeks and stomach, but the crowd is tight. There isn’t a lot of space. Bucky’s hand is spread wide over the lowest part of her back, too. He’s holding her up, holding her close to him, and then the crowd shifts along and they disappear in a whirl of bodies.  
  
Steve sips warm beer. The flush on his cheeks is too long going away; he’ll look drunker than he is. As it stands, he’s more drunk off fumes than the swill they sell here. Unlike their gin, the beer is wheaty, watered-down, and tastes like socks. Damp socks, kind of. If it wasn’t something good for his hands to do, he wouldn’t bother. It costs ten cents a beer, so Steve has to pour another dime down the drain to get another. The bartender raises an eye at him. Steve imagines he’s saying, _why you been sitting here so long?_  
  
Honestly, is his entire body not an answer to that question? To add insult to his normal appearance, he’s sweating, just from sitting there. He isn’t drunk, not really, but only because he’s too sickly to get drunk. Bucky’s not, so Bucky’s dancing, one hand on some strange girl’s back. Already, his hair’s wild, the three flicks disappearing into sweaty clumps swept off his beaming face. Steve ignores the fussy bartender and watches only Bucky, the needle in a roomful of hay.  
  
The beer in his stomach burns hot against his insides. Or maybe that’s jealousy, of a kind. Either way, he can’t stop watching Bucky spin his partner, looking so full of joy he’s fit to burst.  
  
If Steve were less sickly, less defective, less _Steve_ … he still wouldn’t dance. Girls are nice, but the activity is undignified and graceless. Potential risks strongly outweigh the rewards. He’s had a few girls pressed up against him, soft and different and delightfully surprising, but he didn’t have to dance to get them there. If he were half so tall as Bucky, with his straight spine and clear skin, his working lungs and effortless heart, he wouldn’t need to dance. Shit, Bucky doesn’t need to dance. He’s not even particularly good at it. He just loves it, is all. And he’s spinning too, now, caught in the orbit of the lady’s pink skirt.  
  
It’s true that Bucky’s no great dancer—he’s getting all the steps of the waltz, but he’s got no finesse, nothing to write home about—but his inescapable magic makes it all alright. When he steers the back of his partner’s head into some guy’s shoulder, it’s fine. He laughs. His head is thrown back, laughing, and the girl is laughing too. Rosy-cheeked, flushed with blood and simple happiness. She is, Steve realizes, chin on his elbow and envy in his throat, completely entranced by him. Like Margaret yesterday morning, she’s already halfway in love with him.  
  
It’s not all that easy, he wants to tell her. He wakes up cranky, and he likes to start projects with no intention of finishing them. He’s not so handsome when he’s tired and worried about money. And hell, he’s not that good a dancer anyway.  
  
The cymbals crash, and Bucky looks up and over at him. From where Steve’s sitting, Bucky’s almost indistinct, a blur only half-visible from the other side of the stage. He licks his lips and tosses his hair and leans down to whisper something in his partner’s ear. A supernova of burning jealousy erupts in the pit of Steve’s stomach. It’s the alcohol, he tells himself, as he watches Bucky move through the crowd, his partner getting left behind in his wake.  
  
Bucky smiles as he slides into the space between Steve and the next patron, even though it means he jostles Steve’s knee as he goes. He’s sweating, more than Steve but only just, and he was out there dancing. The skin of his throat is flushed red, almost blotchy with blood just under the surface, and he scrubs a hand over it. They don’t say anything; Steve most likely wouldn’t hear him over the music. Seguing into a new song, something brassy but slower, the music makes the dancefloor reorganize itself into new combinations. They are twirling onwards. Bucky’s forgotten partner is no doubt in the arms of someone new, ready to fall in love all over again.  
  
Already firmly inside Steve’s space, Bucky goes ahead and plucks the beer from his hand. There’s a little more than half left, and Bucky swallows most of it in a single gulp. Standing the way he is, his chest against Steve’s shoulder, he’s a wall of heat. The temperature is already borderline unbearable, but Bucky’s presence is like a fire at his elbow. All Steve can do is try not to stare at the triangle of skin exposed by his opened collar, try not to push him and his irrepressible heat away.  
  
He raises an eyebrow. Bucky grins and tilts his head. His meaning isn’t clear, but his happiness is. Forget Margaret. All Bucky needs is a band and a dancefloor. Partners optional. Steve feels optional, except he knows he isn't, not ever. He meant what he said, back in the automat: _You want to just stay in?_ He would have stayed in with him. They’ve done it plenty of times before. He would have curled up on Steve's bed and let him blast the Dodgers game at top volume. He’d do just about anything for Steve.  
  
He’s very, very happy. Steve can feel it emanating off him as strongly as the heat, bright waves of glee. He hasn’t stopped smiling; even when he sips the last glugs of beer, his mouth curves around the bottle into a grin. Through his ribcage and into Steve’s brittle arm, heat and happiness, and the thump of his heart.  
  
Finally, Bucky kills the beer, tosses it onto the bar. Still smiling. Someone bumps into the back of him and he stumbles a half foot closer, almost clearing Steve straight off his stool. It doesn’t dent his mood any; he continues smiling as he surveys the crowd, his apology implied. Smiling like that, he’s panhandling for gold, and a couple of flakes blush obligingly as he looks at them, but nobody seems to catch his eye. That’s okay with Steve, though. He’s greedy for these stolen moments with Bucky. The whole point of this night is the dancing, but Steve will take what he can get.  
  
Bucky nudges him in the ribs. Following his finger, Steve looks downstream. There, the very small girl whose foot he stepped on, looking boldly back at him. No, not him—at his back turned away, at the side of his face. When she catches Steve’s gaze full-on, her eyes dart away as blood fills her cheeks.  
  
The first time a girl found him, _him_ , attractive, it felt like sitting in a chair that isn’t there. A moment of amazement before a painful reacquaintance with physics. He’s older now, less wet behind the ears, but the dizzying disbelief hasn’t quite gone away. Muted, maybe. Steve doesn’t know what to do other than keep looking at her, her dark head of immaculate curls bent determinedly towards the floor.  
  
Bucky leans close, his mouth nearly against Steve’s good ear. "You should dance with that girl. She’s looking at you."  
  
"No she isn’t." He’s not wrong. Not entirely. She isn’t looking at Steve. She’s looking anywhere but him.  
  
"No, she’s got her eye on you." He curls around Steve closer, a great big solid mass of lively, sweaty _boy_. His jaw grazes against Steve’s cheek, and Steve’s day-old stubble catches on Bucky’s freshly-shaved skin. He tries not to shiver.  
  
"You’re gonna laugh at me."  
  
Again, his jaw against Steve’s, close enough that it skirts up against ill-advised. Across the room, the girl looks up at Steve, and then away. "Me?" Bucky says. "Would I ever?"  
  
Of course he would. Of course he would.  
  
That—and the lack of beer, and the price of gin, and the sickly body that God dealt him like a crap hand of cards, a real belly-laugh of a body with its asthma and perversions and skin like waxed paper, barely keeping his glistening insides in—makes him get up. He knocks through Bucky on his way to his feet and doesn’t stop there. People don’t get out of his way, so he shoves. He thinks he can hear Bucky’s shout of laughter, of delight, even over the crescendo of brass.  
  
She’s a blusher, too, like Bucky. She’s staring at the bartender’s head so hard he ought to burst into flames, but _she’s_ on fire. Steve has to tap her on the shoulder just to get her to look at her. His hand catches on the purple netting of her sleeve—his finger slides down from her shoulder to her elbow, almost but never quite grazing her skin.  
  
She turns to look at him. Her eyes are green and her cheeks are still burning. Yet she lifts her chin like she’s Katharine Hepburn. Steve’s never felt less like Clark Gable, but he presses on, knowing that Bucky’s staring at him.  
  
Just before he offers her his hand, he thinks to wipe it off on his slacks. "Steve Rogers."  
  
"Betty." The tiny jewel of her mouth grows tinier as she clasps her hand to his. She doesn’t shake—she just holds his fingers for a moment, squeezing as if to underline her point. Her name is Betty. Her eyebrows look painted on, something Steve’s never noticed before; her whole face is delicately, exquisitely painted to look slightly better than it is.  
  
Emboldened by the fact that she was staring at him, he looks at her. A few of her friends, all taller, wearing coordinated, unimpressed expressions, cluck around her. Betty doesn’t pay them any mind. She meets Steve’s eye, despite the blush, even as she lets her hand fall out of his. She is extraordinarily pretty. He can’t believe he didn’t notice before. He can’t believe that every guy in this bar isn’t fighting for a chance to talk to her.  
  
The words— _would you like to dance with me?_ —grow awkward and spiked in his throat. She was staring at him, and she’s at a dance hall. She must want to dance. How does Bucky ever do this? He doesn’t even like dancing. He feels the need to add that caveat, so she’ll understand why he’s so bad. He’s already apologizing to her. He’s always apologizing for himself, even if it's just in his head.  
  
Pointing, he signals to the dancefloor. She nods.  
  
Oh crap. He didn’t, despite everything, actually think he’d get this far.  
  
She puts her hand in his and he, utterly overwhelmed, wraps his fingers around it. If there’s any hesitation in her mind, she doesn’t show it. It almost makes Steve feel strong. Blindly, he leads her onto the floor and prays for something slow.  
  
Mercifully, it’s not so fast. It’s a jazzy, brassy swing number, the kind he thinks Bucky might like. And speaking of Bucky—he hazards a glance over his shoulder, looking for him. Their spot is vacant at the bar. He knows every bump on Bucky’s head, every knot on both his shoulders, but he blends into the crowd like water on rocks. As the music raises itself from an intro to a real song, the blazing heat of Betty in his arms snatches him out of his thoughts, back into his rotten body back on Earth.  
  
"Sorry," he says, although Betty just smiles. His grip on her waist tightens.  
  
He knows how to dance. Not like Fred Astaire in the movie, but nobody can dance like that; Steve, with his knock-knees and hunched back, is excused from that particular assignment. He knows how to Lindy Hop, has done the Charleston. He prefers the basic steps from open position, Betty’s hand on his shoulder, his hand on the purple lace of her dress.  
  
They swing in place. He doesn’t dip her, doesn’t try anything fancy. It’s enough for him to focus on the rough, blistering rhythm he’s counting in his head. The most important thing is not to step on her—he’s crushed more than a few feet in his dances with real girls. He’d bruised Bucky’s toes from crunching them as Bucky gamely taught him how to dance. Even though Betty’s feet are miniscule compared to Bucky’s, compared to most girls even, Steve’s afraid of what he’ll do.  
  
She smiles reassuringly at him, her fist like a pinion on his shoulder. Her hand is only four or five inches above his heart, and he hopes, prays, that she can’t feel the way his pulse is thundering. He smiles back at her, so wide it stretches the skin of his cheeks.  
  
She laughs. In the roaring din of the crowd, everyone breathing, tapping their feet, twirling their skirts and fluttering their lashes, he almost can’t hear, but he can see. She throws her head back and shows him her smooth white throat and her shiny white teeth. And he can feel the sound waves in her torso, her stomach shaking as she laughs at him. There’s no cruelty in it—and that’s almost as shocking as her eyes on him in the first place.  
  
Damn it all. There’s no chance of Steve falling in love with her, not when he’s already stupid on someone else, but when she laughs like that, he can imagine it. Being in love with her. He doesn’t know her at all, but she’s enough to send his blood running hot in his cheeks, tongue stopped against his mouth. He feels like the girls who dance with Bucky: drunk on possibility.  
  
_Focus_ , he tells himself, dropping his gaze to his feet. Step back quickly, step up. Left, right, back, forward. Mercifully, he doesn’t step on her. He keeps moving, swinging the two of them in tight circles, mindful of everyone else on the dancefloor. And she keeps looking into his eyes like she’s trying to make him fall in love.  
  
In the movie, the crummy movie he watched a hundred years ago, Bucky’s head on his shoulder all through the final act, their hands not quite touching on the armrest, it looked for a moment like Ginger would marry someone else. And it was bad and it was heart-wrenching—or it had wrenched _Bucky’s_ heart, his mouth open and his eyes so big and shiny-wide—but it was obviously never going to happen. In movies, the girls never stay with the wrong guy, they move on to Fred Astaire and get married in the end.  
  
If this were a movie, Steve would be the wrong guy. He feels it keenly, a truth as solid and real as the warm slip of girl in his arms. If this were a movie, the right guy would cut in halfway through the dance. He’d whisk her away. There’d be no more thought of him, because they’d be right together and they’d live happily ever after.  
  
It’s not a movie. He’s sweating profusely from the upper lip—that doesn’t happen in movies. Betty, too, is sweating through her silks, but it’s less offensive from a tiny lady than from Steve. It makes her human, though, and Steve is, if nothing else, reassured that he didn’t hallucinate her exquisite perfection and her interest in him.  
  
They dance. He spins her once or twice, and after she realizes that he meant for her to spin, he realizes that he should have lifted their conjoined arms to his other side. Otherwise he’s meant to duck under and spin himself, back into her arms. He blushes furiously and resolves not to spin again. The music is pounding away and it’s enough to step quickly, rocking on their feet, navigating the small space allotted to them on the floor.  
  
Her cheeks are flushed, her black hair frizzing prettily off her face. She gives him the kind of look that he’s not used to, not outside of Bucky—an open, honest look, a look that seems to pour forth out of her and into him. Like she’s trying to peer under his clothes, maybe under his skin. Like she’s got a claim to him. It’s so unexpected it makes his rhythm lurch, sputter helplessly out of time, and he pulls up short, his confusion mingling with the roar of the band finishing the song with a flourish.  
  
She keeps looking at him, bold as anything. Her lips are open, just barely. Underneath his hand still snug around her waist, he feels her chest rise and fall. Steve’s breathing like he just sprinted a mile. It’s only mostly from the dancing.  
  
"—and gentlemen, _ladies_ and gentlemen," says the bandleader, his introductory words devoured by a screech of microphone static. Betty finally lowers her eyes, and, perplexingly, that’s what makes Steve blush. "Now we’re gonna have ourselves a little dance hall tradition, a little revelry of sorts..."  
  
Betty’s sharp fingers tighten around his shoulder, but Steve doesn’t mind it; he’s not looking forward to this any more than she is. It’s a stupid tradition, a tacky one at that, an idiotic attempt to titillate without stooping to the level of the drag balls. Basically, they strike up their most raucous tunes while everyone has permission to dance with whoever they can get their hands on.  
  
"We can sit this one out," he says. He doesn’t know where that impulse came from; the song is over, she’ll want to be getting back to her friends, surely. But she nods. She’s still burning with a quiet intensity that makes Steve feel perilously exposed, and her hand is hot as she drops it from his shoulder and reaches for his hand.  
  
Bucky is going to _fall over laughing_ if Steve brings a girl back to their seat at the bar.  
  
The music starts up as the old pros, the regulars, start carousing. The newcomers, expressions pinched as they try to work out the not-so-subtle instructions from the bandleader, obstruct the way off the dancefloor without actually dancing. Everybody’s in the way. Betty clings to his side, fingers in the crook of his elbow. Steve doesn’t know what he’s doing with her, if he’s leading her on or in over his head, but he likes the way it makes him feel to have a pretty girl on his arm. At least an inch taller.  
  
A flock of brilliantly colored girls, in pink and green and checkered red and black, descend on them. He recognizes them as Betty’s friends, but only when they grab for her hands. "Betty!" they chorus. "Betty, come on!"  
  
"But why?" she says, her hand slithering free of Steve’s arm even though she doesn’t seem to want it to. But they’re persuasive, and there’s three of them. To them, Steve must look like something scraped off the bottom of a shoe. "One more dance, girls, I’ll just—"  
  
"We couldn’t!" one of them, the tallest, says, "Not without you!"  
  
He doesn’t know if they mean leave or dance themselves. Circles of friends and acquaintances blunder past them, a less messy way to join in the revelry. Far less taboo to link arms than to dance pressed front to front. Even still, all around them, mild debauchery is reigning. As the trumpets crash, a drunk sailor wheels past them, arms possessively encircling another man. The tallest friend, the blonde in checkerboard red, glares at Steve as if the two of them are his fault.  
  
Steve might be a little queer, but he’s pretty sure he’s got nothing to do with _that_.  
  
Betty, caught halfway between her friends and him, looks up at him with plaintive eyes. Her lower lip seems about to tremble. Steve can’t really do anything, but he half-wants to, and his fingers twitch uselessly against his thighs. He could take her for another spin, at least.  
  
"I want to stay with Steve," she says, only half-audible over the band.  
  
"Steve!" shouts the girl in pink, horrified.  
  
"Steve!" says someone behind him.  
  
Steve may be hearing echoes, now.  
  
"Steve?" Betty asks, but Steve is turning, instinctively following that voice.  
  
"Steve," Bucky says, delighted, red-faced, embarrassed, shy. He slips through bodies like a water droplet, suddenly appearing, no worse for wear because of it. His collar’s unbuttoned to the second button, which makes Steve’s whole body ache. "Steve, did you hear—"  
  
A battering ram of sound, half drums and half blaring brass instruments, pushes him forward, into Bucky. He actually bangs his nose on Bucky’s chin, making both of them wince. In the confusion, he steps on something: Bucky’s toes.  
  
Bucky swears, but otherwise doesn’t seem to mind.  
  
The dance is picking up steam like a hurricane, and they’re stuck in its path. People laugh, tossing things in the air; a spatter of beer falls rains down from above, making Steve jump and Bucky laugh. Men are dancing with men, with one girl on each arm, and the bandleader has dropped his trumpet on the stage, grabbed the burly bouncer ’round the waist and pulled him into a rough approximation of the waltz. The song isn’t the right beat for that—even Steve can tell.  
  
Steve swears he feels Bucky’s hand slide into his before it actually happens. When it does, when it’s really Bucky’s five fingers curling around his, it feels momentous. Of course they’ve danced before, a thousand times. Just never in public, never with so many people watching.  
  
Nobody’s watching. Bucky yanks him by the wrist, back into the whirlpool, and Steve stumbles after him. Someone nearly knocks him over, and someone laughs right in his ear. It’s not because of them—everyone’s too crammed into their own private madness to watch them pass—but still, they’re a ridiculous pair. Bucky, all big and strong, and Steve, as fragile as a Q-tip in his embrace. The band, sans the leader, is cranking out a what sounds like it could be a Glenn Miller tune, sped up double-time, with flourishes and improvisations so wild that the melody seems to be eating itself.  
  
"Come on," Bucky yells, grinning, dancing backwards, eyes creasing with delight. Steve’s stomach leaps, and he reflexively squeezes Bucky’s shoulder, hard.  
  
"Let me lead," he hollers back.  
  
It only makes sense—he never learned to follow. Bucky had to know both, which scrambled him for months afterwards, trying to remember if his left or right foot moved first. When Bucky taught him to dance, back when they were still kids, they’d been closer of height than they are now. Now, when he curls around Bucky’s waist, he has to look up to see him. It feels ridiculous, but Bucky’s mouth drops open when Steve squeezes, grinding bone beneath his fingers.  
  
No one’s looking. A dockhand with a lady in pink on his shoulders nearly topples both of them, but no one looks at them.  
  
Bucky stares at him as if no one else is in the room.  
  
The two of them must be the two least subtle inverts south of Manhattan, no matter how many times Bucky dances with pretty girls. Bucky is so obvious, looking at him like that, eyes glittering, mouth wet and indented from his teeth. Bucky gets lost, sometimes, and that’s why he's so relentlessly, endlessly careful in public—why they don’t sit too close or get too comfortable. Steve doesn’t know what he’s like himself. He’s used to being invisible. He has no idea if he’s too intense or too transparent or what; all he knows is he’s doing something to make Bucky look at him like that.  
  
It’s not his dancing. Even leading, he’s rotten at this. And Bucky’s the wrong height, too tall, forcing Steve to clutch at the back of his neck more than at his shoulder. It’s distracting. Bucky’s shirt is unbuttoned so low that Steve’s finger brush against his skin more often that not. He curls his knuckles around the bunched fabric of his collar, fingers skidding against Bucky’s neck.  
  
Bucky exhales, pulls him closer. Too close, too stupid, too public for this. They’ve never gotten up to dance when the band plays like this, because it’s foolish. No one’s looking, but Steve’s not making sure. He’s supposed to make sure. Normally it's Bucky's job, his responsibility; Steve's too headstrong to think a moment in his life, so Bucky does it. Bucky makes sure.  
  
But damn it. Bucky's not checking and Steve can't step up now, can't be the one to pull away and act sensibly. Not when Bucky’s looking at him like this, like he hung the moon. Eyes so big. Like he’s impressed with Steve, like he _loves_ Steve. Steve knows he does—even if he hadn't said so, lots of time, Steve knows. Bucky’s done his laundry and paid his rent and listened to him bitch about everything, from the weather to the Works Progress Administration. Bucky’s seen him at his lowest, personally suffered his most vicious tempers. All that closeness should have taken the shine off the apple. It didn’t. It still hasn’t. Every time Steve unwraps another layer of dysfunction, Bucky eats it up. Bucky is so crazily in love with him that Steve still doesn't, quite, believe it.  
  
It’s only natural that he should love Bucky, after all. Bucky’s... _Bucky_. What the hell is Steve, apart from Bucky’s?  
  
It's tempting, so tempting, to just smash his face into Bucky’s clavicle, to exhale and just stay there in the comforting warm architecture of his body. And on another night, maybe he would. If they were dancing in Steve's apartment in their cotton socks and boxer shorts, he'd do it. But they came here to dance, and they’ve never danced together like this. Not in public. Not with a real jazz band and with other dancers whirling around them, making it real. Bucky loves dancing, loves him. And so Steve, awkwardly and shakily, a half beat behind, leads them in his best impression of the Lindy Hop.  
  
He turns off his half-watchful brain, the anxious self-doubt that prickles over his skin. Lets himself be drawn in, by the music he can’t quite appreciate and the anonymous safety of the crowd. What they are and who they love doesn’t have to matter if he doesn’t want them to—at least not now, not during this song. Bucky hums along to the music, helping Steve find the correct rhythm again. God, he loves him, he thinks, delirious, Bucky’s collar wadded in his fist like he’ll never let go. God almighty.  
  
They dance, and nobody pays them any mind at all.  
  
***  
  
Drenched in sweat, Bucky leans back against the brick wall and gulps in air like a goldfish. His chest heaves. Steve, by his side, kicks him in the ankle as a pretext to wrap their feet together. He, too, has sweat through his shirt. The night has gone cool. In just their shirtsleeves, slick with sweat, their bodies are rapidly sliding from overheated to shivering. Steve can already feel his teeth start to chatter.  
  
But they don’t move. They’re around the corner from the back exit to the bar, just far enough that no one’s there with them. The dance is winding down, the shout of brass bleeding into a low, plaintive hum.  It’s the time of night when the bartenders quit serving and the remaining dancers on the floor get maudlin when the horns wail. If Steve were trying to pick up a girl, the scarcity of competition would make _this_ his moment.  
  
If Steve were trying to get a girl, he wouldn’t have let Betty get away.  
  
He rotates, his shoulder a fixed point on the brick, to watch Bucky as he leans, head knocking gently against the wall. Steve had done the same thing, a few hours ago. How long ago that cup of coffee had been, when they’d been a half dollar richer and few hours younger.  
  
After the one wild dance (entwined so tightly Steve wondered as they let go of one another if maybe they were too obvious), everything went back to normal. Steve sat down at the bar, because Betty was long gone, and Bucky had his pick of partners. That was normal. After an hour or so, Steve got up to dance, because Bucky asked him to entertain his partner’s sister. It was fine. He managed to avoid savaging her toes.    
  
Bucky’s chest continues to fall in gentle waves, rising and cresting with each breath. His skin glows in the fragments of moonlight that pass through the breaches in the solid wall of city skyline.  
  
When he notices that Steve is smiling at him, he turns and smiles back. They don’t hold hands—they’re not stupid—but Steve’s palms itch with wanting to.  
  
"Walk you back to yours?" Bucky asks, when his breathing’s finally settled.  
  
Steve nods and unhooks his ankle from Bucky’s. The band lurches into a somber, dirge-like tune as they go.  
  
They don’t linger on the way home. They’re on the wrong side of midnight, and the chill creeping in off the river is bad for Steve’s lungs. Sometimes in this neighborhood, at night, there are robberies. The backbreaking poverty since the crash has eased up the last few years, with the war in Europe and the manufacturing boom, but not enough to make it perfectly safe at night. As they walk briskly away from the club, the music dies away to the occasional thud of drums, then dissolves into the background hum of traffic.  
  
Cars whiz by, cabs and buses. Passersby thin as they leave the bars and restaurants behind, work their way back to neighborhoods and apartment blocks.  
  
Despite the lack of people, the streetlights blaze. As they pass the bridge, they see Manhattan lit up a thousand times brighter than Brooklyn, brighter than a motion picture, beckoning them across the water. The sounds dazzle too, subway cars and jazz and sirens, all the hustle and bustle of the world distilled into that narrow strip of island. Even the bridge seems gilded with a thousand taillights, all the cars pointed west.  
  
Bucky snorts, and in response, Manhattan dims visibly. In comparison, Bucky lights up brighter, more solid and more real. Something in Steve’s chest eases, and he pushes closer to Bucky, grateful for the heat of his body against his shoulder.  
  
He doesn’t say anything; he lets a hand drift to Steve’s arm, squeezes it once, as if he can rub some warmth back in. He can’t, but it’s okay. It’s nice just to feel him close by.  
  
Their neighborhood is poorer and less glamorous than where they’ve come from, but it’s quieter. Nobody is about to notice their twin shadows intertwining on the pavement. Steve’s apartment, such as it is, is in a boarding house, a few blocks south of Bucky’s parents’ place. It fronts a dirty alley off the street. His landlady never notices his coming and going, never overhears if he brings someone home with him, but still Bucky dawdles on the stoop, brows pulled together.  
  
He gets like this, sometimes. Not that Steve hardly minds. He knows it’s late, knows that Bucky’s own landlord isn’t so accommodating. Bucky, like all perfect children of doting parents, doesn’t like to risk getting caught. He can’t help that, just like Steve can’t help seeing room to bend in every little rule.  
  
"Just come in for a minute," he wheedles. "Let me fix you a cup of coffee or something."  
  
"I’m fine. Didn’t even drink."  
  
These two obvious falsehoods back to back don’t raise any eyebrows, because this is how things work. When they were younger, and shy, and afraid of one another, they’d trafficked in these useful explanations. This was after the dancing but before Steve’s mother passed, when they weren’t sure what they were to each other. Sometimes, back then, Bucky would get drunk to find his courage and then lose it somewhere on the way upstairs. Then they’d drink coffee and avoid eye contact. In all honesty, Steve forgets who brought it to a crisis, him or Bucky. It seemed like the only inevitable solution.  
  
He unlocks the door by muscle memory, without looking. "Well," he says, "If you don’t let me make you some coffee, I’m gonna feel like you were just walking me home to keep an eye on me."  
  
He’s never said that before, so it takes Bucky aback. Like most things, it doesn’t knock Bucky off his feet for long; he throws his head back and laughs, showing off his smooth white throat.  
  
A jagged feeling, part recognition, part regret, rolls through Steve’s chest— _Betty_ —but it slips away before he can pin it down. Like all the dancers who trip halfway into love while the band is playing, he’s almost forgotten her now that the dance is over.  
  
Bucky, smiling, says, "Anything but that."  
  
Treading lightly on the stairs, they creep as if in danger of being discovered. Steve’s heart beats a tattoo in his chest, a wobbly one: one, two, three... four, one, two, three... four...  
  
Moonlight falls on Bucky’s shoulders, his thin shirt still damp with sweat. He floats a hand out into the darkness, and Steve seizes it.  
  
Up they go, fingers linked. Steve’s room is locked, and the key scrapes in the lock. His bed and desk and narrow chest of drawers lay swathed in silence. He’s long stopped noticing how shabby it looks—these things don’t matter. it’s his, and it’s private, and Bucky is in it, looking around like everything is new.  
  
It isn’t, but Steve sympathizes. Sometimes he gets lost in all the details, trying to recreate from moments in time how it had happened. How any of it was possible. The dancing should have been a clue. Only love could motivate Steve to learn the lindy hop, and only love could have allowed Bucky to soldier on in teaching him. Steve bruised his feet black and blue and flew into a horrible temper whenever Bucky made the mistake of correcting him once too often. It had been so humiliating, so frustrating. And they’d illogically persisted, until Steve could dance.  
  
Bucky unbuttons the top button of his shirt. His throat flutters—Steve can see it. In the darkness, he can't quite track Bucky's line of sight, but the turn of his head and the heat of his expression are unmistakeable. Even still, he restrains himself.  
  
Steve does the same, not wanting to move first when he knows Bucky's gonna cave.  
  
It takes less than ten seconds. With a frustrated sigh, Bucky falls onto Steve's bed, hands balled loosely by his sides. "Get your ass over here."  
  
He smirks, stomach thrilling. He yanks his shirt off as he advances, and it float through the floor like a giant linen snowflake somewhere behind him. "Gonna tell me what to do?"  
  
"Gonna stop me or something?" Bucky challenges.  
  
He’s daring him to, but Steve doesn't really need instructions; this isn't their first time. With a solid shove to Bucky's chest, he knocks him back onto his elbows, banging his head against the headboard. The impact rattles loose laughter from his chest, even though it has to hurt. Idiot boy. Steve digs his knees into his hips as he settles on his lap. He takes hold of Bucky’s face and drags it upwards, kissing him ’til he feels Bucky shiver and melt in his hands.  
  
The girls are a sort of ruse. Not a ruse—Bucky likes girls, likes taking them out dancing. Since Bucky can’t dance with the person he really wants to dance with, he dances with girls. And he likes people. He likes girls, even; not like Steve does, but he’s a people person, through and through. He likes to make girls feel good, take them out, treat them right. Dance them ’til their feet are sore. But if Margaret ever thought she’d be the one spread over Bucky’s lap like butter, she was wrong. Steve knew how his night was ending up, long before Bucky set eyes on Margaret and her yellow dress.  
  
Bucky tilts his chin up, enough that the angle of their kiss becomes awkward, strained. That’s his way of asking, and Steve obliges. He turns and drags his mouth down the side of Bucky’s throat. In answer, Bucky exhales, soft and sweet. He’s whisper-quiet, not because he’s embarrassed,  but because that’s who he is.  
  
And Steve knows that. Steve’s been polishing all the secrets off Bucky’s shiny exterior since they were babes in arms, since they first met. He knows Bucky better than anyone on earth, just as well as Bucky knows him.  
  
It ought to be terrifying. Maybe it was at some point, but it was long ago, and Steve’s sort of forgotten. He isn’t immune to the irony of it all, no sir. It’s rotten that he’s a skinny little cripple with asthma and a bum ear, that he’s good at reading and painting and not much else, and that Bucky’s the opposite of all that. It’s rotten of the world to make him bold and anxious and prickly and needy all at once.  
  
But Bucky, with plenty of options at his disposal, seems not to care. And hell, he's got flaws of his own, and plenty of them.  
  
Sitting up ’til his spine unfolds, Steve stays close, hands looped around Bucky’s neck and fastened at the top of his spine. He isn’t intending on going anywhere. Bucky cocks his head to look up at him, eyelashes fanned over his cheeks. And Steve would be lying if he said it didn’t give him a thrill, Bucky looking up at him. "You had fun tonight?" he asks.  
  
"Sure, I liked it fine," he says. He isn’t lying. He never lies to Bucky. "I like to see you happy."  
  
This is why they go on dates with other people. If Steve could take Bucky dancing without it being anything, he would. Sure, they could go—they live in Brooklyn, they could sneak up to the fairy bars near the Naval Yard or the drag balls with their outrageous costumes, slip bribes to the watchman and keep vigil as they creep home. But Steve would still be half a head shorter and he’d still only know how to lead. It wouldn’t make sense.  
  
He’s fine with it. He’s fine to let Bucky dance with any old girl, any old girl whose eyes or ass catch his fancy. He’s jealous but he isn’t cruel. If he could, he would call down the moon for Bucky. He’d sieve the sea and catch Bucky an ocean of silver fishes, he’d do horrible things, if he had to. Hell, he’d even go out dancing, just to see him smile.  
  
Besides, it doesn’t matter. Bucky goes with girls plenty, but he comes home to Steve.  
  
As the quiet of Steve thinking deepens into a protracted lull, Bucky sigh contentedly, slumping up against him til his browbone rests heavy on Steve’s collar. In reply, Steve leans his head on top of Bucky’s, his cheek against the crown of Bucky’s head.  
  
"Were you jealous?" he asks. "Of me and that girl?"  
  
He waits for Bucky’s response, listening to him breathe, watching the moonlight smear itself onto the curtains. "Yes," Bucky says simply. "I didn’t like the way she was looking at you."  
  
Then he pushes up, giving Steve a look of sheepish repentance, the same one that’s gotten him out of all the trouble that Steve gets them in. His eyes look gray in the moonlight, although Steve knows they’re really blue.  
  
"I was jealous, too," he says.

"Of who?'

"Everyone. Everyone who gets to put their hands all over you and dance without anybody minding. And I don't even like dancing." That makes Bucky laugh, and Steve smiles too. He rolls a thumb over Bucky’s cheekbone, remembering how it felt to watch Bucky dance with other people, wondering how Bucky felt, watching him dance with a beautiful girl. He’s forgotten her name already—the girl—but if he tells Bucky that, he won’t believe him. He’ll think he’s being cute.  
  
He presses even closer, voice as low as he can get it. "You know I don’t want anybody else. You know I don’t want anyone but you."  
  
Bucky shrugs, fingers curled on Steve's wrist. "I know it."  
  
Sometimes Steve wonders if Bucky really does.  
  
It would be useless to tell him again, because Steve's talked his ear off trying to assure him. He knows  Bucky doesn't doubt his loyalty or his affections—Steve's never given him any reason to, the momentary attentions of a dance partner not withstanding—but Bucky's never experienced real loss or heartbreak the way Steve has. Consequently, he's terrified of it. He'll get over it, once he's had a real tragedy or two. Then he'll know he can survive anything.  
  
They kiss for a while, hot and bruising, wriggling free of shirts and suspenders. It's always like this, messy and undignified when it's just the two of them. Steve flings Bucky's pants over his shoulder and gets on his knees for him, the way Bucky likes best. When he puts his hand on Bucky's stomach, he can feel his muscles quivering, and he goes almost dizzy with pride at how wrecked he is. That's because of Steve, and so is the soft sound Bucky makes in his throat when he comes.  
  
Smirking proudly, Steve sits back on his ankles. He lazes there, on the floor, until Bucky recovers and hauls him onto the bed, kissing him stupid. It doesn't take him long to return the favor.  
  
After, they lie in silence in Steve's rickety bed, cold toes commingled for warmth. Bucky, who is a monster, climbs halfway on top of him, sharp elbows becoming acquainted with Steve's ribcage. "Ouch," he protests, and Bucky rearranges. Not much. Enough that he's no longer impaling Steve, but he remains mostly sprawled on top of him. It's hard to want him gone. He's warm and he smells exactly right (cheap beer and the hair pomade he uses). Rather than protesting further, Steve makes his peace with it.  
  
"What are you thinking about?"  
  
To Steve's surprise, he's thinking about Margaret. She had seemed so excited to go dancing with Bucky, it almost doesn't make sense that she wouldn't show. Was Steve really that off-putting? Did she and her friend show up, decide that Bucky's charms weren't worth the indignity of dancing with Steve, and scram? It doesn't matter, at all. But he can't stop thinking about it.  
  
Not that he'd ever tell Bucky, of course. He breathes in and says, "That dancing movie you made me watch with your sisters. You remember, with your song in it."  
  
Lighting up, Bucky hums a snatch of that song he loves, _The Way You Look Tonight_. His voice is thin and unsure, but the melody hangs in the air, pretty as a sunrise.  
  
"Yeah. Why? Was I reminding you of Fred Astaire?"  
  
"'Cause you got big funny eyes, yeah."  
  
Rolling his eyes, Bucky nips at his throat again, teeth sharp to convey his disapproval. He loved that movie—he and his sisters are forever mentioning it, as if they saw it just last week—and he adores that song. Steve thinks it’s fine, unremarkable, whatever. This is partly because he can’t hear it properly, his uncooperative left ear spitting static into the tune. But partly it’s because he just can’t see that far ahead. He can’t predict, on his ratty bed in July 1941, that someday that song will be the first thing Bucky slurs upon waking, lips still blue from cryofreeze. He couldn’t possibly imagine what that will feel like.  
  
But that moment is a long way off, and right now, with Bucky warm and present and humming to himself, even tomorrow feels an eternity away.  
  
"No," he says. "I was just thinking that that's what you did. You tricked me. You taught me to dance and then you tricked me into falling in love with you."  
  
"I never tricked you," Bucky says into the curve of Steve's neck. "I told you up front I was trying to make you fall in love with me. And it worked, didn't it?"  
  
He did say that, but Steve thought he was joking. He wasn't. Steve smiles, lacing their hands together. "It really did."  
  
Bucky's eyes slip closed as Steve strokes the back of his knuckles, reminiscing. They get married in the movie, Ginger and Fred. They get married and the big band leader who comes between them disappears--Steve forgets how. Maybe he marries someone else more suitable. Maybe Margaret found a more appealing suitor for Dolores tonight, and they went off chasing their own happy endings. Steve couldn't begrudge them that. He knows that a happy ending for him and Bucky can't involve a wedding—actually, it will involve psychotherapy and T'Challa's guest house and many, many conversations with many lawyers and, although he doesn't know it yet, a wedding—but any story that ends with him and Bucky together is a good one. Not a tidy Hollywood ending, but a damn good one all the same.  
  
"So that's why you thought of it? 'Cause you realized I'm a genius?"  
  
"No," Steve says, pressing his smile into the top of Bucky's head, "I realized that makes you Ginger."  
  
He snorts but doesn't move, too content. Silver beams of moonlight, like a dreamy soft focus lens, glint in his hair and on his shoulders, even on the backs of Steve's narrow wrists.  
  
"You ungrateful punk," Bucky mumbles, and they don't say anything more before falling fast asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> this tragically has nothing to do with Zadie Smith's novel, which I have not read, and everything to do with the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie that Steve keeps thinking about. (that movie is a highly problematic fave.) also, this fic is a) technically canon compliant wrt CA:3, and b) happy, neither of which I thought were possible.


End file.
